Angels in the Snow

by Rexanne Becnel

  Charles looked helplessly up to Judith to see tears welling in her eyes. Alex and Jennifer had moved instinctively to her and she clasped them almost desperately.

  At once Charles’s frustration fled, to be replaced by far more complex emotions. Even though Jennifer matched her mother’s height and Alex topped her by five inches, they were both her babies and always would be. They needed her as much as he did.

  His heart seemed to catch in his chest. He wanted to go to them—to hold them so close they could never slip away from him. But young Josie still sat on his lap, and the woman crouched at his feet, holding her. He could only stare at his own little family, choked by the most powerful emotions he’d ever known.

  God, he loved them!

  Finally the woman lifted her face from her daughter’s curly head. “Thank you for taking us in. We . . . we couldn’t have gone on much further.”

  Charles took the hand she offered. It was still icy cold, and he squeezed it tight, trying to impart some of his own warmth to her. How precious life was. How fragile. It could just as easily have been his family stranded in a blizzard this way. Once more emotions caught in his throat. “You’re safe now,” he managed to say. “You’re all safe.”

  Their eyes met and held. Then she smiled and nodded. It took an effort for her to get to her feet. But she was able to lift little Josie in her arms and cross to stand beside her husband.

  “You’ve saved us,” the man said in a low tone. He looked down at his two older children as he struggled to control his voice. “I’m sorry we’ve barged in like this, but we didn’t know what else to do. We couldn’t get the van back on the road . . .” He shook his head, but he went on. “I’m Joe Walker. This is my wife, Marilyn, and our children—Robbie, Lucy, and Josie. I—” He broke off and had to compose himself. “I don’t know how we can ever thank you.”

  Judith met Charles’s eyes and for a moment they were connected, sharing the same feelings of thankfulness for their own safety and that of their children.

  Then Judith cleared her throat. “Don’t think anything of it. Anyone would do as much. I think, though, that we ought to get your children into bed. You, too,” she added, for their exhaustion was plain. “Drink your chocolate and then we’ll get you all settled. There’s an extra bedroom with a double bed. Robbie can sleep in Alex’s room. Lucy can sleep with Jennifer.”

  “Mother!” Jennifer objected in a low hiss. Alex, too, stared at his mother in disbelief. But Charles silenced them with a sharp look.

  He stood up. “We didn’t introduce ourselves. “I’m Charles Montgomery. My wife, Judith, and our children, Alex and Jennifer.” He shook hands with Joe while Judith refilled their mugs. “Tomorrow we’ll see about your car. Is there anyone you want to call to tell them you’re safe?”

  While Judith and the children carried the Walkers’ meager possessions upstairs and settled Marilyn and her children in their beds, Charles showed Joe to the phone. For some reason the man looked vaguely familiar, but Charles couldn’t figure out why. When Joe turned to the phone, however, Charles remembered. There was a ponytail tucked down in the man’s thermal shirt. He had been at that grocery store—he and his kids from the yellow van. A worried frown creased Charles’s brow, then deepened when Joe turned to him.

  “The phone lines must be down.”

  Charles took the phone receiver from him. There was no dial tone. He pulled out his cell phone. “The cell reception’s not too good, but give it a try.”

  Sure enough, Joe couldn’t get a signal. “Cell service is spotty in these mountains. And all it takes is one fallen tree to take out the phone lines.”

  Charles sighed. If the phones were out and the roads impassable, then they were all trapped together. Suddenly the reality of having a strange family forced upon them caught up with him. A pair of strangers and their raggedy children interfering with their Christmas. Was there anything else that could go wrong with this trip?

  He watched Joe Walker trudge up the stairs. When the man turned into the hall and disappeared from view, Charles sighed again, thrust his hand through his hair, then returned to the living room.

  The silence in the spacious room seemed unnatural. Alex and Jennifer had settled down on either side of the game they’d abandoned earlier. Judith sat in a large chair she’d pulled nearer the fireplace. Her feet were tucked beneath her, and her hair was mussed. She was staring pensively, not at the dancing flames, but at their children. When he entered, however, everyone looked up.

  “Well.” He sighed once more as he seated himself on the raised hearth and looked over at Judith. “Looks like our guests may be here for a while. Not only is the cell service pathetic; now the landline is down. And the way it’s snowing, the roads may be closed until the snowplows can get out.”

  “What would have happened to them if we hadn’t been here?” Jennifer asked in a subdued voice. She didn’t sound like herself, and Charles knew she must have had time now to consider the seriousness of the Walkers’ mishap.

  He glanced uncomfortably at Judith. “It’s silly to worry about what might have been, honey. The fact is, we were here.” But he could tell Jennifer was not reassured.

  Judith frowned and rose from her chair. She crossed to Jennifer and leaned down to put her arms around her. “They would have broken a window or something and gotten inside. They would have been okay.”

  “They were at that grocery store,” Alex put in. “While you guys were inside, I saw those kids in the parking lot.”

  “That man talked to me inside, Mom. He’s the one who told me I should get the dried fruits.”

  “Yes. I remember.” Judith looked at Charles. “He seemed like a nice enough man.”

  “Yes, well, I’m sure we have nothing to worry about,” Charles agreed, rubbing his chin restlessly.

  “You mean, even though he has long hair and they all dress kind of weird?” Alex said. His voice held a faint, sarcastic edge.

  “They’re not weird,” Judith interjected before he could goad his father any further. “They’re just different from us and most of the people we know. I’m sure they’re a lovely family.”

  “Josie has a rabbit.”

  Everyone looked at Jennifer.

  “In that basket. She has a rabbit. She showed me and I brought it a carrot and some water. It was hurt,” she hurried on. “It’s the one they were trying not to hit when they got in that wreck. They saw a big animal chasing the rabbit. A lynx. And they had to stop so they wouldn’t run over it. That’s when they wrecked.”

  “And they brought the rabbit with them after it caused them to total their van?” Alex laughed. “Stupid rabbit ought to be cooked for supper.”

  “Shut up, butthead!”

  “Hey, they wouldn’t have almost frozen to death if it weren’t for that rabbit.”

  “It was the lynx’s fault, not the rabbit’s. You think the rabbit wanted to be hunted by that—”

  “That’s enough, you two,” Charles ordered. “The rabbit doesn’t matter. The question is, if this storm doesn’t quit soon, will we have enough food, now that we’ve got twice as many people to feed?”

  Judith tucked a strand of Jennifer’s hair behind the girl’s ear, then moved to Alex’s side and absently did the same to him. “There are a number of items in the pantry. You know, dried foods, canned vegetables, potatoes, and beans. We won’t go hungry.”

  “Yeah, well,” Charles said, standing up again and beginning to pace the room. “Tomorrow they can put their own clothes on. There is a washing machine here, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, Charles.”

  “Good. Well.” He drummed his fingers nervously on the newel post. They’d had no choice but to take the Walkers in, and now they would just have to make the most of it. “It’s been a long day. I’m ready for bed; how about you, Jude? You ready to go up?”

  “You go on,” she replied without meeting his eyes. “I’ll be along in just a bit.”

  With Jennifer and Alex both wat
ching him, Charles could do nothing else. If Judith wanted to avoid the intimacy of their bed, there was little he could do about it. Especially with strangers in the house.

  In the past they’d always resolved their differences by bedtime. He would pull her close and start to kiss her neck. Soon he would have her smiling and laughing, and everything would be all right. He’d been counting on that to work tonight as well, for he needed that physical and emotional closeness with her. They both needed it—it had been far too long since they’d held each other. But with the Walkers here, that changed everything, he decided in disgust.

  Still, as Charles mounted the stairs, his head sunk forward and his back slumped, he knew he could not blame Judith’s distance on the Walker family. They were disrupting his plans for placating her, but they weren’t the cause of the problem. He trudged up the stairs, unaware how much his exit mirrored Joe Walker’s earlier one. Holding a family together—trying to hold a family together—was the hardest work he’d ever done.

  Chapter Five

  The house was as cold as the outdoors. One by one as they awoke, children and adults alike made their way downstairs to the huge fire that already blazed in the living room.

  They were a haphazard-looking group, Charles decided, with blankets draped around nightgowns and terry cloth robes, and coats on top of pajamas and slippers. The only ones among them who appeared alert and fully awake were Joe and Marilyn Walker. While he brought in an armful of wood from the back porch and stacked it to the side of the hearth, she poured mugs of hot chocolate for the children, and hot coffee for the adults.

  “Damn, what happened to the heat?” Charles asked.

  Joe stood up and dusted off his arms, then looked at Charles. “The phones are still out, and now the electricity is, too. No lights. No radio or television. And no heat.”

  “What about the furnace?” Charles asked.

  “The place is all electric. A lot of these weekend places are that way. It’s easier than coal or oil, and cleaner. The only time it creates a problem is in storms like this. You might want to consider another form of heat for this place,” he suggested.

  “It’s not my place,” Charles responded irritably, trying his cell phone again, to no avail. “What’s the matter with these weathermen? They predicted a white Christmas, but nobody said anything about a storm like this.” He watched as little Josie wormed her way inside the front opening of her father’s coat, then was lifted into his arms and nearly lost inside the thick army-green wool.

  “Take this coffee,” Marilyn murmured. “I hope you like it with milk and sugar.”

  “My mother always gave us milk coffee like this,” Judith replied over the edge of her steaming mug. She smiled at Marilyn, then let her gaze sweep over the others and come to rest on Charles. For a moment he was warmed by the old familiar glow in her eyes. But then she looked away and spoke once more to Marilyn.

  “I think we need to get everyone warmly dressed and get some breakfast going. We’ll all have to stay in the living room near the fire.”

  “We can use blankets to block off the stairwell so no heat escapes upstairs,” Joe said. “The boys can bring down rugs and blankets so we can all be comfortable in here. If that’s okay,” he added, glancing at Charles.

  Charles sighed and rubbed his brow. “Whatever. Do we have any battery-powered radios here?”

  “None that I’ve found,” Joe said.

  “There’s a radio in the car,” Judith pointed out.

  Charles straightened. “Good thinking, Jude. Maybe I can find a local station with some news about this damned storm.”

  “It’s still snowing pretty hard. Be careful.”

  He smiled at her. “Don’t worry. I’ll bring my phone with me. With any luck it’ll work outside. I’ll reach the state police, and we’ll have snowplows out here in no time.”

  While Charles suited up for his trek to the car, Judith and Marilyn got the house organized. “Get these potted sculptures out of here,” Judith told Alex and Robbie. “Also, this hall tree. Bring in the dining table and chairs. And the rug, too. Put them over there.”

  “Here are candles and two antique oil lamps. I hope they work,” Marilyn said as Josie came bounding down the stairs ahead of her father. He carried a wicker basket in his arms.

  “The rabbit needs quiet and a warm spot.”

  Behind him Jennifer and Lucy came, loaded down with pillows. “We thought we’d scatter these pillows on the floor in front of the fire,” Lucy said. “Like in Moonbeam’s tepee.”

  “Moonbeam’s tepee?” Alex gave the girl a skeptical look. “An Indian tent?”

  Lucy shrugged. “I think she’s Native American. Isn’t she, Mom?”

  Marilyn smiled, then told Judith, “My stepsister lives in a tepee part of the year. She’s got a little Huron blood.”

  “She chews deerskins to make them soft.” Robbie stared challengingly at Alex and Jennifer. “She says if you kill animals you should honor them by using every part of them. The skin. The bones. The meat—even the heart and the brains.”

  “That’s disgusting!” Jennifer exclaimed.

  “You like hamburgers, don’t you?” he pressed on. “And leather shoes. Is that gross?”

  “That’s enough, Robbie.” Marilyn gave him a warning.

  “Aunt Moonbeam is really nice,” Lucy told Jennifer with a reassuring smile. She tossed her dark, waist-length hair behind her shoulder. “You’d like her. She makes the best bread.”

  “Acorn bread with wild honey,” Robbie said. “She smokes the hives and steals the honey.”

  “You can’t make bread out of acorns.” Jennifer glared at the laughing Robbie.

  “Acorn bread,” he continued. “Cattail pancakes. Daylily fritters.”

  “Robbie.”

  He glanced at his mother, then shot Jennifer a last look as he started toward the door. “They’re all delicious. You should try them someday.”

  “Your brother is weird,” Jennifer muttered to Lucy once he was gone.

  “They are delicious.” The younger girl defended her absent brother. “At least the way Moonbeam makes them, they are.”

  Judith pushed the overstuffed couch nearer the fireplace and positioned two easy chairs next to it, smiling to herself. Jennifer and her well-dressed preteen princess friends were as far removed from the Moonbeams of the world as it was possible to be. Jennifer’s disbelief and disgust wasn’t surprising; Judith felt nearly the same. Still, it would be interesting to see how Jennifer and Alex got along with these children whose upbringing was obviously so unlike their own. Hopefully they would manage all right.

  Judith watched Alex and Robbie turtle-walk into the big living room with the dining table suspended between them. Judging only by their looks, the two shaggy-haired boys appeared cut from the same mold. Both were skinny and dark haired, although Alex was a couple of years older and almost a head taller.

  “Where are you from?” she asked Marilyn as they unrolled the thick rug Joe had brought down from one of the bedrooms.

  “We live near Edgard, but we’d been down at Reed City. There’s a big crafts fair there every year right before Christmas. It’s the last bazaar we attend before the winter lull.”

  “You sell things at fairs and bazaars?”

  The slightly younger woman pushed her heavy dark hair behind her ear. “I’m a weaver. Joe is a wood craftsman and painter. We follow the fairs and festivals,” she added with a faint edge of challenge in her voice.

  “Oh.” Judith combed the fringed edges of the Oriental carpet with her fingers. There was an unexpected wholesomeness about this family. And even though following crafts fairs was an odd existence, completely unlike her own, part of her understood its appeal. These people had done what every child dreamed of doing: they’d run away with the circus, more or less.

  “Do you always bring the children with you?” she asked, truly interested. She sensed the slow relaxation of Marilyn’s tension.

  “Always. W
e’re a family. We stick together. I was a teacher before I turned to weaving, so when we’re on the road, I homeschool them. Once we get home, I’ll probably have them write their own versions of this latest adventure.” She smiled. “It’s always enlightening to see the same event from three very different viewpoints.”

  “Surely Josie is too young to write.”

  “She draws pictures, then tells me what captions to write for them. But it won’t be long before she’s writing them herself.”

  A cold rush of air announced Charles’s return.

  “Damn, it’s frigid out there!” He crossed to the fireplace slapping his hands against his arms while he backed as near the roaring flames as he dared.

  Marilyn had a fresh mug of coffee for him before he could ask for one. “Any luck?”

  “No. At least not with my phone.” A last violent shiver shook him. He removed his gloves with stiff fingers, and gratefully took the mug she offered. “I guess the weather is affecting the cellular system.”

  “Was the radio out, too?” Judith asked.

  “No. I got a couple of stations, enough to hear that the storm has taken out a lot of power lines. For the time being, it looks like we’re completely cut off.”

  Judith met her husband’s eyes, and the worry she saw there upset her more than anything else. They could manage without electricity so long as firewood was plentiful. They had shelter. They had food. She’d considered this a major inconvenience. But she suddenly recognized the seriousness of their predicament. They could be trapped here for days—or even weeks. There were no other homes nearby. That was one reason Charles had insisted they come here in the first place. No distractions.

  But now it meant no help.

  Her panic must have shown on her face, because Marilyn put a comforting hand on her arm and pulled her to sit on the couch. “Here, sit next to your husband and warm him up,” she instructed as she pushed Charles down as well. “Everything’s going to be fine. You’ll see.”